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PRINCETON REYIEW. 

JANUARY, 18 6 1. 



No. I. 



Article I. — The State of the Country. 

There are periods in the history of every nation when its 
destiny for ages may be determined by the events of an hour. 
There are occasions when political questions rise into the sphere 
of morals and religion ; when the rule for political action is to 
be sought, not in considerations of state policy, but in the law 
of God. On such occasions the distinction between secular 
and religious journals is obliterated. When the question to be 
decided turns on moral principles, when reason, conscience, and 
religious sentiment are to be addressed, it is the privilege and 
duty of all who have access in any way to the public ear, to 
endeavour to allay unholy feeling, and to bring truth to bear 
on the minds of their fellow-citizens. If any other considera- 
tion be needed to justify the discussion, in these pages, of the 
disruption of this great confederacy, it may be found, not only 
in the portentous consequences of such disruption to the welfare 
and happiness of the country and to the general interests of 
the world, but also in its bearing on the church of Christ and 
the progress of his kingdom. Until within a few years there 
was no diversity of opinion on this subject. It was admitted 
that the value of the union of these states did not admit of 
calculation. As no man allowed himself to count the worth of 
VOL. XXXIII. — NO. I. 1 



2 The State of the Country. [January 

the family union, to estimate in dollars and cents the value of 
his father's blessing or his mother's love, so no one dreamt of 
estimating the value of the union of these states — a union 
cemented by a common lineage, a common language, a common 
religion, and a common history. We were born in the same 
family, rocked in the same cradle, struggled through the same 
difficulties. We were united in the council chamber and on the 
battle-field. The blood of Northern and of Southern patriots 
flowed in a common stream, and their ashes lie mingled in the 
same graves. These are not sentimentalities which men of 
sense can afford to despise. They are bonds of union which 
it argues moral degradation to disregard. Moreover, there is 
no denomination of Christians whose members are not found in 
every part of our common country. Almost every family at 
the South has kindred living at the North, and the families at 
the North have kindred at the South. The union of these 
states is a real union. It is not a mere association, such as 
binds together nations of different races, languages, and politi- 
cal institutions, as in the Austrian empire. Our outward union 
is the expression of inward unity. To this we owe our dignity 
and power among the nations of the earth. Had we been as 
the dissociated communities of Italy, we had been insignificant. 
It is because we are one that we are great, prosperous, and 
powerful. All this, until recently, was the common sentiment 
of the country ; and the man who should advocate a dissolution 
of the Union, would have been associated, in the estimation of 
his countrymen, with Benedict Arnold. And such, we doubt 
not, will be the position assigned by the judgment of posterity 
to the authors of disunion, should that calamity befall us. 

Besides the bonds of union above adverted to, this country 
is geographically one. The bounds of nations are not arbi- 
trarily assigned ; they are, in general, determined by fixed laws. 
A people indeed, as in the case of the Romans, may conc^uer 
other nations, and gather them all under one despotic head in 
despite of their essential diversities. But this is a temporary 
contravention of the laws of nature. It is the configuration of 
the earth's surface Avhich determines the boundaries of nations. 
Greece was geographically one. So was Egypt ; so is Italy, 
which is now at last struggling to attain its normal state. 



1861.] TJie State of the Country. 3 

Spain, France, Great Britain, Germany, are all one, not by the 
will of man, but by physical laws, which men can contravene 
only to their own detriment or destruction. The immutable law 
of God, as expressed in nature, makes the territory assigned 
to the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent one nation. The 
same mountain ranges run through the whole land. The great 
valley, beginning in Carolina and Tennessee, reaches to the bor- 
ders of Canada. The broad Atlantic slope is one continuous 
plain. The immense basin of the Mississippi includes, as the 
bosom of a common mother, the states from the Lakes to the 
Gulf of Mexico. The Ohio, the Missouri, and the Mississippi, 
are arteries which carry the same living flood through the vast 
region through which they flow. The country is thus physically 
one, and therefore its organic life is one. We cannot divide a 
tree without destroying its life. We cannot divide a river with- 
out producing an inundation. The union of this country, there- 
fore, is determined by the homogeneity of its people, by its 
history, and by its physical character. It cannot be perma- 
nently dissevered. The mistaken counsels or passions of men 
may cause a temporary separation, but the laws of nature will 
ultimately assert their supremacy, and avenge, by terrible dis- 
asters, their temporary violation. Besides, there is the moral 
bond. We are bound together by covenants and oaths. It 
requires something more than annoyances, or collisions of opinion 
or interests, to free men in the sight of God or man from the 
obligation of an oath. These states are pledged to a "per- 
petual union.". All federal and state officers are bound by oath 
to maintain that union, and the constitution on which it is 
founded. It is admitted that there may be circumstances 
which will justify a nation in violating a solemn treaty, or a 
people in casting off the obligation of an oath of allegiance ; 
but no man, who has the fear of God before his eyes, will ad- 
vocate such violation except in extreme cases. 

Although these things are so, and although the conviction of 
their truth until recently rested as an axiom in the public mind, 
we are nevertheless at this moment on the brink of disunion. 
We are not of the number of those who think there is no danger 
in the present state of the country. We fully believe that 
several of the Southern states are bent on secession, and there is 



4 Tlie State of the Country. [January 

great reason to fear that should a Southern confederacy be once 
formed, all the fifteen slave-holding states will ultimately com- 
bine. What has produced this great and lamentable change in 
the public mind? Why is disunion, so recently regarded as 
criminal and impossible, now looked upon as almost inevitable ? 
What are the causes which have produced the present state of 
feeling? This question may be viewed in different aspects. 
It may be understood to mean, What are the political events of 
which the existing condition of the country is the natural 
sequence ? or, it may mean, What are the grounds on which the 
cotton states desire a separation from the Union? These are 
different questions and must receive different answers. As to 
the former, it is a political question, and will be answered 
according to the political views of those by whom the answer is 
given. One party says, that the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise, the effort to force the Lecompton constitution upon 
the people of Kansas, the refusal of Southern politicians to 
unite in the nomination of a Northern democrat for the presi- 
dency, are the causal antecedents of the present state of things. 
It matters not, they say, whether the Missouri Compromise 
Act was constitutionally obligatory as a law, it was binding as 
a compact. It had been voluntarily formed; it had been 
regarded as sacred for thirty years; to set it aside for the sake 
of a sectional advantage was regarded as a violation of honour 
and good faith. Much of the Territory of Kansas lies to the 
north of latitude 36° 30^ If the compromise was acted upon, 
Kansas must be a free state. To secure her admission as a 
slave state was regarded as a matter of great importance, not 
only to the South generally, but especially to Missouri. 
Therefore that compromise was abolished. Then whether 
Kansas should be a free or slave state, depended on the char- 
acter of the settlers. This led to a rush from both sections of 
the country to pre-occupy the ground. This gave rise to fierce 
collisions. The settlers from the North proved the more 
numerous. To overcome this fact and to give the minority the 
ascendency, fraud and force were resorted to. Election returns 
were falsified, legislatures and conventions were packed with 
men illegally elected; attempts were made to force the pro- 
slavery constitution thus framed upon the people without their 



1861.] The State of the Country. 5 

consent. These facts rested not on rumour, nor upon news- 
paper reports, but upon judicial investigation and the tes- 
timony of democratic governors and federal officers. It was 
the conviction of the truth of these facts which called into 
existence the Republican party. That party is not an anti- 
slavery, much less an abolition party. It may suit politicians 
on either side so to represent it, but the mass of the people care 
little for politicians or for what they say. They make little 
account of platforms which are not read by one in a thousand. 
The people act from their own views. The facts above-men- 
tioned oflFended the conscience of the people of the North, and 
the condemnation of those acts was the whole significancy of 
their vote, first for Fremont, and then for Lincoln. In this 
condemnation they have the concurrence of probably nine- 
tenths of all the intelligent people in the country ; for it is one 
of the infelicities of the necessary existence of parties in a free 
government, that men are often obliged to sanction acts which 
they personally condemn. Notwithstanding, however, the 
general disapprobation of the measures referred to, such is 
the disposition at the North to concede everything to the 
South for the sake of peace and party predominance, there is 
little doubt that the election of Mr. Lincoln would have been 
defeated had it not been for the split in the Democratic party 
at Charleston. The nomination of a sectional candidate at 
the South and another at the North necessitated the defeat of 
the other candidates who bad some claim to stand on a national 
basis. Such is the view of the political causes of the present 
alarming state of the country, taken by the great body of the 
people of the North. They refer it to the action of the dominant 
party during the last six years. Whether this is a correct view 
of the case, is not the question. It is enough that this is the 
view which has determined, and which interprets the action of 
the North. It is important that this should be understood, in 
order that the state of the public mind should not be misappre- 
hended and misinterpreted. 

The special supporters of the present administration, or the 
leaders of the dominant party, of course seek for other political 
causes of the present agitation of the country. They deny that 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, or the action of the 



6 The State of the Country. [January 

government in the Kansas question, or even the division of the 
Charleston convention, is the cause of the difficulty. They 
throw the responsibility on the opposers of those measures. 
They say that if the policy of the administration had been 
acquiesced in, as a true regard for the interest of the country 
required, there -would have been no interruption of the public 
peace. 

It is not, however, the political aspect of the case that we 
propose to examine. It is more important to turn our attention 
to the question. What are the grounds on which the cotton- 
growing states advocate the dissolution of the Union?* or, 
What are the reasons why they desire to secede? These 
reasons are two, very different in their nature and in their 
effects. The one is the conviction that they would be more 
prosperous in a separate, independent confederacy. Their 
pecuniary interests, they think, would thereby be greatly pro- 
moted. The other reason is, the alleged aggressions of the 
North, which, it is said, not only justify secession, but render 
that measure necessary for the preservation of the rights and 
safety of the South. The former reason probably determines 
the action of the leaders in this movement, the latter sways the 
popular mind, and by the exasperation of feeling which it 
excites under the sense of injustice and apprehension of 
danger, furnishes the motive power.f 

* We confine the question to the cotton-growing states, as in them only has 
any strong secession movement been developed. The vast majority of the 
people in the other slave states are opposed to disunion. They would prevent 
it if they could. It is only in the event of the cotton states withdrawing from 
the confederacy, that the other states may bo constrained to join them. 

f The New York Herald's special Virginia correspondent writes from Eich- 
mond on the 24th November, as follows: 

"The best informed men in this section— among whom I class some of our 
wisest representatives in Congress— seem to entertain very slight hopes of any 
good result from a Southern Conference. There is one serious obstacle, which 
will probably nullify all eflorts at conciliation, viz. The cotton states believe 
that secession, intrinsically, involves much more benefit to them than could 
result from a continuance ia the Union. Their prime, animatimj vwtive in 
pursuing this policy is to reopen the African slave trade, and that they are 
aware they never can do within the Union. Secession is, after all, with 
them a matter of material interest. I do not mean to insinuate that the 
movement is solely actuated by that consideration, but there can be no doubt 
of its exerting a controlling influence on it. This you may rest assured of. 
"I have no idea that the cotton states will now forego the advantage which 



1861.] The State of the Country. 7 

That the leaders of the secession movement are influenced by 
the conviction that secession would promote the prosperity of 
the cotton states, has been openly and frequently avowed. It 
is said they would not only be relieved from great national bur- 
dens and from commercial restrictions, but their resources would 
in every way be increased. They cast their eyes on Cuba. 
They see that that noble island is rendered secure by the 
jealousies of other nations. France will not permit its acqui- 
sition by Great Britain, and Great Britain will not consent to 
its passing under the dominion of France. Neither France nor 
England would be satisfied to see it in the hands of the United 
States. Thus secure from foreign aggression, its productive- 
ness and its geographical position would render it, in a pecu- 
niary point of view, one of the most prosperous portions of the 
globe, were it not for the enormous <^rain upon its resources 
made by the demands of Spain. As it is, it has few rivals in 
pecuniary prosperity. What is to hinder the cotton states, it is 
asked, from occupying a similar position? Cotton is held to 
be an absolute necessity to England, France, and the Northern 
states of this Union. All would be forced, by a regard to their 
own interests, to maintain the independence of the Southern 
confederacy. With unlimited free trade, the ships of other 
nations would crowd the Southern ports, bringing every article 
of luxury or use the South requires, and taking cotton in 
return. The wealth which now pours into the North would 
thus be transferred to the South. By opening the slave trade, 
labour could be obtained at a far cheaper rate than at present, 
and the production of cotton increased to meet the utmost de- 
mand. The Southern tier of states would thus become rich 
and prosperous beyond all competition. Such is the picture 
which the advocates of disunion have drawn. The first remark 
which such representations suggest is, that all these advantages 

the election of Lincoln presents for the accomplishment of an object which to 
them is far dearer than the preservation of this Union. In the reopening of 
the African slave-trade they recognize one of the greatest sources of wealth and 
prosperity that any country could acquire. With such advantages, they feel 
that they could control the destinies of the world, and make Europe and the 
North bow in obedience to their will. There is much truth in the idea ; but, 
whether there is or not, they entertain the conviction firmly, and argument 
will be unavailing in the effort to remove it." 



8 The State of the Country. [January 

are for a class, and that a very small class, of the inhabitants 
of those states. The benefits of disunion are to accrue to the 
holders of slaves. But they constitute a small minority of the 
•white population of those states. Is it fair or reasonable that 
a revolution should be effected for the benefit of so small a 
minority of the people? Has not class-legislation been ever 
regarded as one of the greatest evils of the nations of Europe? 
Are not thousands of sufferers from such legislation constantly 
flocking to this country as to an asylum ? And are we to intro- 
duce among ourselves this most odious and unjust feature of 
foreign policy? But admitting that disunion would not only be 
advantageous to slaveholders, but incidentally to the non-slave- 
holding majority, is this a reason for disunion which can pre- 
sent itself at the bar of conscience? Can a contract be right- 
fully broken for money? The people of Pennsylvania, and of 
many other Northern states, are fully convinced that a high 
protecting tariff would be greatly to their advantage ; that 
under such protection, with their immense mineral resources, 
they would soon become to this continent what England has 
long been to Europe and the Avorld. It has, however, never 
been suggested that this conviction would afford any justifiable 
ground for a dissolution of the Union. The prosperity of the 
New England states was utterly prostrated by the policy of the 
government in the times of the non-intercourse and embargo 
laws. In those times, secession, as a means of redress, was de- 
nounced as high treason. How then can any Southern state 
justify a disruption of the Union which was declared to be per- 
petual, on the ground that it would be profitable? 

This bright vision, however, of the prosperity which is to 
follow disunion, is a work of the imagination. All the condi- 
tions of the problem are not, and perhaps cannot be, taken into 
view. The cotton-growing states are not an insular territory 
like Cuba. They are an integral part of a great continent. 
They are a member of an organized body. They cannot have 
a separate life of their own. A tourniquet applied to a limb 
may cause its distension for a time, but at the certain expense 
of its vitality. The carrying out of this Southern programme 
would place the cotton states in direct hostility with the other 
slave states. It would be their ruin, at least for years to come. 



1861.] The State of the Cowntnj. 9 

The value of their propei'ty in slaves must be depreciated 
many per cent. This would lead to their being crowded into 
those States where their labour could be profitably employed. 
This would soon be followed by over production; the price of 
cotton, the sole foundation of all these brilliant hopes, must 
decline, and the besom of desolation would sweep over the land. 
The hopes of security and protection from the conflicting 
jealousies of European powers; the anticipation that France 
and England, having abolished slavery in their own dominions, 
would unite to uphold it in the cotton-growing states of this 
confederacy, and rejoice in the humiliation and destruction of 
the North, are all built on the assumption that Satan governs 
the world. The natural anticipation is, that as those na- 
tions have submitted to the enormous sacrifice of emanci- 
pating their own slaves, they would use all their influence to 
abolish slavery elsewhere. It has long been the conviction of 
our most enlightened men, that it is nothing but the protection 
which the flag of the Union spreads over slavery in this coun- 
try, that prevents England arraying all her power for its 
destruction. Separated from the North, a Southern confederacy 
of the cotton-growing states would be at the mercy of the anti- 
slavery feeling of the world. The dissolution of the Union, 
therefore, in all human probability, would be the death-blow to 
slavery. Hence men who think only of that subject, have 
been the earliest and warmest advocates of the dismemberment 
of the confederacy. We have no heart to dwell on this point. 
No one can predict the evils of disunion. The chimera of 
abounding wealth can prevent none but the infatuated from 
perceiving the overwhelming counterbalancing considerations. 
An entire loss of dignity and power by the cotton states con- 
sequent on secession from the Union, might sufiice of itself to 
deter from such an experiment. Without a navy, without 
an army, without resources for either, such a confederacy 
could exist only by suS"erance. It would be subject to all 
kinds of insults, annoyances, and injuries, for which impo- 
tent wrath would be the only redress. The disproportion 
between the two portions of the Union thus divided, woukl 
constantly increase. The South would grow in a slave popula- 
tion, and the North in a population of freemen. By the time 
VOL. XXXIII. — NO. I. 2 



10 The State of tlie Country. [January 

the Southern confederacy numbers four millions of white in- 
habitants, the North would have forty millions. ^Vhat can be 
the consequence of such disproportion between conterminous 
political communities, when there is nothing to restrain injury 
and annoyance? This is a dismal prospect, from which we 
gladly turn our eyes. The evils to the cotton states themselves, 
from disunion, are so probable and so great, that the argument 
from interest is not that on which reliance is placed. It is a 
sense of injustice, of injury, of danger, and consequent feeling 
of animosity, that is appealed to by political leaders in order 
to make the people willing to secede. 

Let us calmly, and in the fear of God, examine this other view 
of the case. What are the grievances of the South ? That our 
Southern friends do feel aggrieved, that they believe that 
great injustice has been done them, that their rights have been 
encroached upon and their safety endangered, there can be no 
doubt. Nothing else can account for the state of feeling which 
now prevails at the South. It must also be acknowledged that 
the South has some just grounds of complaint, and that the 
existing animosity towards the North is neither unnatural nor 
unaccountable. At the same time it is perfectly apparent to 
every dispassionate mind, that these grievances are greatly 
exaggerated, and that this animosity arises in a large measure 
from misapprehension. 

The first great grievance of the South is the spirit, language, 
and conduct of the abolitionists of the North. It is a grievance 
to be hated and denounced, to be held up as execrably wicked. 
It is a grievance to have slaveholding represented as the 
greatest of crimes ; to have immediate emancipation insisted 
upon as an imperative duty. The grievance consists partly in 
the injustice of these judgments. Those thus condemned and 
denounced feel that they are injured. Resentment is the 
unavoidable consequence of unmerited condemnation. Mere 
moral disapprobation of the system of slavery would be no just 
ground of complaint. One of the ablest and most philosophical 
speeches delivered of late years on the floor of Congress, was 
pronounced by a representative from Alabama, in which he 
took the ground that the mere disapprobation of .slavery was 
a sufficient reason why the South could not remain united with 



1861.] The State of the Country. 11 

tlie North. But this is evidently untenable. A man may 
have a moral disapprobation of the system of serfdom in 
Eussia, of the church establishment in England, or of the law 
of primogeniture, or of an order of nobility, and yet live as a 
peaceful citizen of those countries. The disapprobation of 
slavery, always entertained and avowed by the Quakers, has 
never been regarded as a grievance by the South. It is only 
when such disapprobation is not only unjust, but when it is the 
source of hatred and abuse, that it rouses animosity. In the 
case before us the elements of injustice and violence are com- 
bined. Slaveholding is not a crime. A man by being the 
owner of slaves does not justly forfeit respect and confidence. 
He may be one of the best of men. It is therefore an act of 
injustice to condemn him as a criminal. And when this 
condemnation is connected with violent defamation, it becomes 
an intolerable grievance; that is, such a grievance as cannot 
ordinarily be submitted to without awakening the strongest 
resentment. It must be admitted that this is a grievance under 
which the South has laboured and is still labouring. The great 
mistake, however, of our Southren brethren, is that they charge 
this offence on the people of the North ; whereas, the truth is, 
there is not one in a hundred of the people of the North who 
entertains these opinions and joins in these denunciations. We 
appeal in support of this statement to every accessible index of 
public opinion. Of the hundreds of religious newspapers pub- 
lished at the North, the number is very small that breathe the 
spirit of abolitionism. The proportion of the secular press 
controlled by that spirit is not greater. We do not know of 
one clergyman among the Roman Catholics, or the Episco- 
palians, or the Dutch Reformed, belonging to the class of 
abolitionists. Of the three thousand Old-school Presbyterian 
clergymen in the country, we do not believe there are twelve 
■who deserve to be so designated. Of the Northern Baptists 
we have no knowledge of the prevalence of abolitionism to any 
great extent in their ranks. Among the Methodists there is 
perhaps more of that spirit, but counteracted by a strong 
conservative element. The clergy may be taken as a fair index 
of public sentiment on all moral and religious subjects, and 
their influence in determining that sentiment cannot be denied. 



12 The State of the Country. [January 

It is a great and lamentable mistake, therefore, on the part of 
the South, to suppose that the great body of the intelligent 
men at the North have any sympathy with those who are 
known among us as abolitionists; that is, with those who 
regard slaveholding as a crime, and immediate emancipation a 
duty; and who denounce all slaveholders as unworthy of 
Christian fellowship. 

But it is said that the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presi- 
dency is unmistakable evidence of the prevalence of abolitionism, 
and of settled hostility to the South. It has been pronounced 
a declaration of war. The fact that abolitionists generally 
voted for Mr. Lincoln, is appealed to as one proof, at least, 
that the Republican is an abolition party. But does the fact 
that all the Southern disunionists voted for Mr. Breckinridge 
prove that all who favoured his election are disunionists, or 
that he himself belongs to that class ? The reverse is noto- 
riously true. Why, then, should the Republicans be denounced 
as abolitionists, because abolitionists voted the Republican 
ticket ? No rational man can believe that Pennsylvania gave 
Mr. Lincoln sixty thousand majority as the representative 
of abolition principles. As before remarked, the Republican 
party consists of those who desired to enter their protest 
against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the attempts 
to force slavery upon Kansas, joined by thousands who wish 
for a protective tariff, and thousands more, who, from dislike 
of one candidate, and distrust of another, preferred to vote for 
Mr. Lincoln. The only question of principle, so far as relates 
to slavery, which distinguishes the mass of the people at the 
North from the extreme Southern party, is, whether slavery is 
a municipal or natural institution; whether a man's right to 
hold a slave as property rests on statute law, or upon the 
common law. If the latter, then a man has a right to carry 
his slaves into any state or territory into which he may law- 
fully carry his ox or his horse. He may bring them by 
hundreds and thousands into any state in the Union, and 
settle with them there. If the former, he can carry them no 
where beyond the legitimate authority of the law by which 
slavery exists. Which of these views is correct, this is not 
the place to discuss. All that we wish to say on the point i&, 



1861.] The State of the Country. 13 

that this is the sura of the difference in principle between the 
North and the extreme South; and that, as a historical fact, 
the doctrine that slavery is a municipal institution, that no 
man has the same right to hold his slave in bondage in France 
and England, that he has there to keep possession of his 
books or clothes, was the doctrine of all parties in this 
country until within the last twenty or thirty years. If, 
therefore, holding this opinion is a just ground for separating 
from the North, it was a just ground for refusing to submit to 
the administration of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
and every other President, unless our present chief magistrate 
be an exception. Holding this opinion as to the foundation 
of slavery, therefore, does not constitute the Republicans an 
abolition party, and does not afford a reason for disunion 
which can satisfy the judgment or conscience of any reasonable 
man. 

There is another consideration which ought to satisfy the 
South that the North is not infected with abolitionism. There 
are three different views entertained as to the moral character 
of slavery. The one is that adopted by the abolitionists, viz. 
that slave-holding is a crime calling for the execration of the 
■world, and excommunication from the church. The opposite 
extreme is that slavery is a normal institution, good in itself, and 
one which should be perpetuated and extended, and, therefore, 
that the slaves should be kept in such a state of ignorance and 
dependence as is necessary to render the indefinite duration of 
the institution possible, safe, and useful. The third view is 
that slavery, as a system of domestic despotism, belongs to the 
same category with political despotism. It is not morally wrong 
in itself, and, therefore, under all circumstances; it is not to be 
denounced as a crime, nor are slaveholders, as such, to be held 
up as worthy of condemnation, or excluded from the fellowship 
of the Christian church. At the same time, as slaves are 
men, they should be treated as such, as the children of a 
common Father, entitled by the gift of God to mental and 
moral culture, to have the light of heaven let in upon their 
souls, to the rights of property, and to the prerogatives of the 
conjugal and parental relations. To deny them these rights 
is ad great a sin as though they were freemen. Most men, 



14 The State of the Country. [January 

when they condemn slavery, have certain slave laws in their 
minds; laws which forbid the slaves to be instructed, which 
declare they cannot contract marriage, or which authorize the 
forcible separation of husbands and wives, parents and children. 
But Southern Christians condemn these laws as heartily as we 
do. Indeed, no man can be a Christian who does not condemn 
them. It is only a few days since we heard a slave-holding 
minister say that his church would as certainly discipline a man 
for selling a husband away from his wife, as for drunkenness. 
It is a wicked misrepresentation when men at the North hold 
up Southern Christians as approving of such laws, and it is an 
equally wicked misrepresentation when men at the South de- 
nounce men at the North as abolitionists, because they con- 
demn those same laws. This view of slavery, we verily be- 
lieve, is held by nine-tenths of the intelligent Christian people 
of this country, north and south, east and west. At the late 
meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church 
at Rochester, there were present over three hundred delegates 
from every state in the Union, except Oregon and one or two 
of the New England states. A more harmonious body never 
assembled in this land. It was a fair representation of the 
whole country. Yet on the subject of slavery there was no 
difference of opinion or feeling manifested from beginning to 
end. There was not one Southern minister in that body who 
might not have settled at the North, nor one Northern minister 
who might not labour acceptably at the South. Presbyterians 
do not differ so much from other Christians, as to invalidate 
the argument from their unanimity in proof of the prevailing 
sentiment of the country. It is, therefore, a judgment unsup- 
ported by facts that the people of the North are abolitionists in 
the sense in which that word is constantly used. There is no 
material difference of opinion on the subject of slavery among 
the intelligent Christian people of this country. There are 
extremists North and South, but the mass of the people are of 
one mind. The state of opinion, therefore, at the North on 
this subject, affords no reasonable or justifiable ground for 
the disruption of the Union. 

Another grievance justly complained of, is the inter- 
ference of Northern abolitionists with the slaves of the 



1861.] The State of the Oountrij. 15 

South. This is done by the attempted distribution of 
abolition publications through the Southern states, and by 
emissaries who endeavour to create dissatisfaction among the 
slaves. This is not only offensive, but in the highest degree 
dangerous. It puts in peril the lives of men, women, and 
children — of wives and daughters. This is beyond measure 
exasperating. The slaveholders feel as men living over a 
powder magazine into which people outside insist upon throwing 
burning coals. We admit that such tampering with the slaves 
is a great crime, and that it is a grievance which would justify 
almost any available means of redress. We doubt not that it 
is to the exasperation arising from this cause that the animosity 
and excitement now pervading the Southern mind are prin- 
cipally due. We admit the fact ; we admit that it is a crime 
and an offence ; we admit that it calls for redress. But is 
disunion the rightful or effectual remedy? Is it right to break 
with the whole North because of the conduct of a small band of 
fanatics over which the people have no control, and for which 
they are not responsible ? Of the eighteen millions of Northern 
white men, there is probably not one thousand who have any 
agency in these attempts to excite the Southern slaves, or who 
approve of it. Would it be fair for the North to hold the 
South responsible for the deeds of violence reported in almost 
every paper, of which innocent Northern citizens in Southern 
states are the victims? It is unjust therefore to visit on the 
North the sins of a small class of men among them, when those 
offences are heartily condemned, and when they would be 
prevented, were prevention possible. 

This, however, is not the only injustice in the case. It is 
not only unjust to hold the North responsible for the dissatis- 
faction excited among the slaves at the South, but it is a great 
injustice to attribute that dissatisfaction to the efforts of 
Northern abolitionists as its sole or principal cause. For one 
communication that reaches the minds of tiie slaves tending to 
promote disturbance, coming from Northern fanatics, a hun- 
dred, probably a thousand, come from Southern men and from 
their political allies at the North. The circulation of abolition 
publications is prohibited by law, and sedulously guarded 
against; abolition emissaries, if such there be, act at the 



16 The State of the Country. [January 

imminent peril of their lives. So far as the minds of the 
slaves are concerned, little can possibly be effected by those 
agencies. Whereas Southern papers, and those of the same 
political party from the North, circulate freely through the 
South. Those papers teem with extracts from the extreme 
anti-slavery publications. They labour to convince those who 
read them, that the North with its eighteen millions of people 
is of one mind that slaveholding is a great crime. They 
constantly endeavour to prove that the Republican party is 
pledged to abolish slavery, to interfere with the peculiar 
institutions of the South. Who read those papers? The 
coloured people read them. Their contents spread from mouth 
to mouth — exaggerated and distorted. You might as well fire 
cannon from one end of the country to the other, and complain 
of the slaves hearing them, as to allow such papers to circulate 
and expect their contents to remain unknown. We verily 
believe that it would be less dangerous to the South to allow 
unrestricted circulation to the Independent than to the New 
York Herald or the Journal of Commerce. If disunion is to 
come, if the South is to experience the horrors of servile 
insurrections, it will be referable more to the inflammatory and 
defamatory character of such publications, than to any other 
proximate cause. Besides the evil done by such publications, 
exciting public speeches are made in almost every town and 
village. In these speeches Northern men are denounced as 
enemies. They are spoken of with hatred and contempt. 
These orators labour to convince the people that property in 
slaves is in danger; that the North is sending emissaries 
through the land to promote emancipation ; that the success of 
the Republicans would be the triumph of abolitionism ; and, 
if not resisted, the death-blow to slavery. Who hear those 
speeches? The slaves hear them and believe them, though 
nobody else may. Southern planters also do not hesitate to 
discuss all these questions around their dinner tables, while 
their slaves are standing at their elbows. We have heard and 
seen this with our own ears and eyes. Southern men say they 
are living in a powder magazine, and resent the show of 
combustibles a thousand miles off', and yet daily disport them- 
selves with fireworks. It is a mii-acle of mercy that an 



1861.] The State of the Countnj. IT 

explosion has not long since occurred. While, therefore, 
we admit that the attempts of Northern fanatics to produce 
dissatisfaction in the slaves is a crime, yet we deny that this 
offence can be justly chargeable on the people of the North, the 
vast majority of whom condemn it, and would gladly prevent it if 
they had the power ; and we maintain that so far as dissatisfac- 
tion or disposition to servile insurrection exists, it is attributable 
far more to Southern papers, speeches, and table-talk, and to 
Northern anti-Republican papers having free circulation at 
the South, than to all the efforts of fanatical abolitionists. 

A third prominent grievance of which the South complains, 
is that the provision of the Constitution requiring the restora- 
tion of fugitive slaves, has been, and is, openly disregarded and 
set at nought. The Constitution is a compact. If, say our 
Southern brethren, that compact is violated by one party, it 
ceases to be binding on the other. On this ground they assert 
that they are at perfect liberty to secede from the Union. This 
is the argument which is presented in every possible form, in 
newspaper editorials, in legislative debates, in gubernatorial 
messages. It is rung through the South, and echoes through 
the North. Yet a moment's consideration will show that the 
complaint is utterly unfounded. It is admitted that Southern 
masters have a constitutional right to the restoration of their 
fuo-itive slaves. On whom does the obligation to restore such 
slaves rest? Upon the Federal Government, or upon the 
state authorities? Upon the Federal Government, according 
to the solemn decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, our highest judicial authority. Assuming that the obli- 
gation rested upon the states, Pennsylvania passed certain laws 
to regulate the manner in which the duty should be performed. 
The Supreme Court pronounced those laws unconstitutional, on 
the ground that it belonged to the Federal Government to carry 
into effect that provision of the Constitution. Has the General 
Government refused to perform that duty? It is the party on 
whom the obligation rests. Has it failed to discharge that ob- 
ligation? Not at all. Stringent laws for carrying into effect 
that part of the constitutional compact have been passed by 
both houses of Congress, and approved by the President. The 
whole judicial and executive power of the Government is pledged 
VOL. XXXIII. — NO. I. 3 



18 The State of the Country. [January 

to their execution. In not one instance have the judicial 
or executive officers charged with this duty failed to perform it. 
So far from it, the judicial officers have notoriously erred on 
the other side. They have sent free men to the South as slaves, 
who have been returned on their hands. They have shocked 
public justice in their zeal to carry out the law. The United 
States troops have been called out to secure its execution. 
Slaves have been returned to their masters, in some instances, 
at an expense of twenty, thirty, or forty thousand dollars to the 
Government. Educated men, professors in our colleges, have 
been condemned to imprisonment for attempting to interfere 
with the execution of the fugitive slave law. At this moment, 
if any Southern man can point out a slave living in Massachu- 
setts or Vermont, he will be restored, though it should cost a 
hundred thousand dollars, or even a civil war. The Federal 
Government, the party bound, has never failed to discharge to 
the utmost its constitutional obligations in this matter. It is 
not true, therefore, that the national compact has been broken. 
The North, as represented in the Federal Government, the only 
organ through which it can constitutionally act in the premises, 
has not only been faithful in this matter, but it has carried its 
fidelity to the verge of servility. Contrast the zeal of the 
General Government in carrying out the provision of the Con- 
stitution in reference to fugitive slaves, with its conduct in 
regard to the provision which requires that the citizens of one 
state shall have in all other states the same privileges as the 
citizens of those states themselves. This provision of the Con- 
stitution, so far as concerns coloured persons, is a dead letter 
in some of the Southern states. It has been formally nullified 
by law. A gentleman of the highest social and professional 
standing was sent to Charleston, peacefully and respectfully to 
bring the validity of that law before the United States courts. 
He was not allowed to do so. lie was ordered and forced to 
leave the city. No judicial officer of the General Government 
has been commissioned to carry out that provision of the Con- 
stitution. United States trooj)s have not been ordered out to 
secure its faithful observance. It has not been executed, and 
it cannot be executed. The attempt to enforce its observance 
would inevitably split the Union, and therefore the North 



1861.] The State of the Country. 19 

quietly submit. It may be said that persons of African descent 
are not citizens in view of the Constitution, and therefore have 
no right to be recognized as such in the Southern ports. This 
is the point which Massachusetts wished to have judicially de- 
cided, and was forbidden to make the attempt. It never has 
been judicially decided by a court of competent jurisdiction. 
Besides, this was not the ground on which the law forbidding 
free negroes to enter the state of South Carolina was enacted. 
Whether citizens or not, they were to be excluded. We do not 
say there may not be an overruling necessity for that law. It 
may be that the North would be unreasonable and unjust to 
insist on the full execution of the Constitution in this matter. 
Our only object is to show that while a constitutional provision 
painful to the North is carried out by all the resources of the 
Federal Government, a like pi^ovision distasteful to the South 
is allowed to remain a dead letter. 

It is, however, said that "the personal liberty laws" passed 
by some of the Northern states are a virtual nullification of the 
fugitive slave law, and therefore a breach of compact. If a 
breach of compact, they are, as it is asserted, a full justification 
of the disruption of the Union. We admit that the obligation 
to restore fugitive slaves is a constitutional and moral obli- 
gation, and consequently that any law designed to prevent 
such restoration is unconstitutional and criminal. So far as 
the laws in question have that design, they are worthy of all 
condemnation ; and so far as they are the expression of impo- 
tent hostility, they are unbecoming the dignity of a sovereign 
state. If the people of any state cannot conscientiously sub- 
mit to the constitution, there are only two courses open to 
them: they should either endeavour, in a peaceable and 
orderly way, to have the Constitution altered, or they should 
move out of the country. They have no right to live under a 
Constitution and enjoy its benefits and yet refuse to submit to 
its stipulations. This is a matter as to which the conscience of 
many people is at fault. They think that if they disapprove, on 
conscientious grounds, of the restoration of fugitive slaves, they 
are bound to resist such restoration. This is a great mistake. 
Their duty, in that case, is to try to have the Constitution 
altered, but until it is altered, they are bound to allow it unre- 



20 The State of the Country. [January 

strictcd operation, or to renounce all allegiance to it. We 
regard, therefore, all opposition to the restoration of fugitive 
slaves, whether bj legislatures, or by individuals, or by mobs, 
as morally a crime, deserving legal penalties and the condemna- 
tion of all good men. If, therefore, any state has passed laws 
to prevent the full and efficient operation of that provision of 
the Constitution, we hold that they are bound by their allegi- 
ance to God as well as to the country at once to repeal them. 
Let them endeavour to free themselves from an obligation 
which wounds their conscience, in some just and honourable 
way. There is a very prevalent mistake as to the responsibility 
of individuals for the constitution and laws under which we 
live. We are bound to use all our influence to make the con- 
stitution and laws what they ought to be. But if, without our 
agency, or in despite of our efforts, constitutional provisions are 
adopted or laws enacted, which our conscience does not approve, 
it is not our fault. We are not at liberty^to resist them. Sub- 
mission to their operation implies no approbation. We are not 
bound to cooperate in giving them effect. We may quietly 
refuse, and submit to the legal penalty. It is thus the Quakers 
act with regard to church rates in England, and to the militia 
laws in this country. They do not muster for military training 
as the law requires, but they pay the prescribed penalty. 
Thousands of the people of France disapprove of the act of 
Louis Napoleon in assuming imperial power, but it would be a 
crime to resist his authority. Our country may enter on an 
unrighteous war, but that would not justify any state legisla- 
ture or any individual in resisting the national army. The 
moral responsibility of such laws rests upon those who pass 
them, not on those who have no agency either in their enact- 
ment or their execution. 

We heartily join, therefore, in the condemnation of all resist- 
ance to the restoration of fugitive slaves. All laws designed to 
interfere with the fr.ll and efficient operation of the constitu- 
tional compact on this subject are immoral. But the question 
now before us is, Whether the personal liberty laws, us they are 
called, free Southern men from their allegiance to the country 
and from the obligation of their oaths? This is the question 
which every Southern man has to answer in the sight of God. 



1861.] The State of the Country. 21 

It is not to be answered under the impulse of passion, or the 
dictates of interest. He is not freed from his obligation to the 
Union because he is alienated in feeling from the North, nor 
because he thinks his interests would be promoted by secession. 
The only question is, whether these personal liberty laws are 
such a violation of the national compact as to destroy its bind- 
ing force, and to justify disunion? We answer, No, for the 
following reasons: 1. Because, as already said, the Federal 
Government is the party bound, and therefore so long as that 
government is faithful to the contract there is no violation of 
the compact. 2. Because the liberty laws, so far as we can 
learn, are not ex professo a nullification of the fugitive slave 
law. They are not directed against the agents legally appointed 
to execute that law. The law emanates from the General Gov- 
ernment. It is designed to carry into execution a federal pre- 
rogative and duty. It is confided to federal officers. A law to 
forbid the collection of duties at a port of entry by federal 
officers would be an act of nullification. But a law to forbid 
state officers to make the collection, or state warehouses to be 
used for storing the goods, would not be nullification. So in 
like manner, a law to forbid federal officers to arrest fugitive 
slaves would be nullification. But a law forbidding state officers 
making the arrest, and prohibiting the use of state prisons for 
their detention, is not a nullification of the law of Congress. 
The duty is from its nature a distasteful one, and any declara- 
tion that it must be performed by federal officers thereto ap- 
pointed, and not by state officials, who cannot legally be 
required to perform it, is not a breach of contract. If the 
United States troops in Boston harbour should desert, Massa- 
chusetts is not bound to arrest them, and a law prohibiting the 
state officers from being called upon to perform that service, 
would not be a nullification of the law against desertion. It is 
a United States law, and must be executed by United States 
officers. 3. A third argument on this subject is, that the 
liberty laws are designed professedly to protect free negroes. 
There is danger of their being unjustly carried into slavery. 
It has been done, and we know that a young woman from Texas, 
although liberated by her owner and father, was considered so 
much in danger in New York that she was sent to Canada for 



22 TJie State of the Country. [January 

protection. If a negro in Virginia, held as a slave, claims to 
be a free man, the law gives him certain facilities for having 
the validity of his claim judicially decided. If a negro living 
in Massachusetts is seized as a slave, Massachusetts desires to 
give him the same means of proving that he is free. The pro- 
visions of the Massachusetts law are said to be identical with 
those of the corresponding Virginia law. This is not nullifica- 
tion. 4. But suppose these laws to be directly in conflict with 
the fugitive slave laws; suppose a state should expressly pro- 
hibit the restoration of a fugitive slave arrested within her bor- 
ders, would that justify secession? Would that exonerate any 
slave-holding state from its allegiance to the Union? Certainly 
not, because secession is not the proper remedy for this injus- 
tice. The first step would be to have such state law declared, 
by the Supreme Court of the United States, to be unconstitu- 
tional. That would make it a dead letter. In no part of the 
Union could it be executed in the face of such a decision. But 
should it be persisted in, the next step would be for the United 
States to enforce obedience to its own law. Any state resisting 
under such circumstances Avould be in rebellion, and must be 
reduced to submission to the law, just as Washington suppressed 
the Whiskey insurrection. This is the operation of our system. 
Nullification of the fugitive slave law, therefore, even if for- 
mally enacted in any state, would be no justification of seces- 
sion. It is not a breach of contract, so long as the Federal 
Government, the party bound, is faithful to its duty. These 
liberty laws, objectionable as they may be, are not the real 
cause of the difficulty. The border states which suffer from 
the loss of slaves, are not in favour of secession. The complaint 
of breach of contract comes from states which suffer little or 
nothing from this source. We do not see, on a careful con- 
sideration of the matter, how any conscientious man can justify 
disunion on the ground that the North has proved unfaithful to 
the national compact. The great majority of the people of the 
North are in favour of the faithful execution of the law, and the 
Federal Government, their constitutional organ, has never 
failed to discharge its duty in the premises. 

Another ground of complaint is that the South has lost its 
equality in the Union ; or that they are denied equal rights. 



1861.] The State of the Country. 23 

This complaint lias the more force on the popular mind from its 
vagueness, and from its appealing to a sense of justice. A 
denial of equal rights to any part of the confederacy would be 
indeed a just ground of complaint. This grievance is presented 
in different lights by our southern brethren. It sometimes 
means one thing and sometimes another. It often has special 
reference to the territories. These are the common property 
of the country. The North, South, East, and West, have an 
equal right to their possession and occupancy. Hence it is 
inferred that if immigrants from the North are allowed to take 
every species of their property into the territories, immigrants 
from the South have the right to take everything which the 
laws of the South declare to be property. To deny this is to 
deny equal right in the territories. To this it is answered, 
1. That there is no restriction peculiar to the slave holding 
states. The people from those states may take into the terri- 
tories everything that the people from the North are allowed 
to take. They are placed on terms of perfect equality in this 
respect. 2. That the restriction with regard to slaves, which 
bears equally upon all, whether citizens or foreigners, whether 
from the North or from the South, is not founded on any 
assumed superior claim of the North to the common heritage of 
the country, but simply on the principle that slavery is a muni- 
cipal institution, and therefore can exist only where there is 
some law to create and to enforce it. Carolina cannot justly 
claim that her slave laws should have authority in France, or 
England, or in the Northern States, or anywhere else beyond her 
own territory. Whether this reasoning be correct or not, yet 
since the doctrine that slavery is a municipal institution was 
the common faith of the country when the Constitution was 
adopted, and when the Southern states entered the Union, as it 
was held by all our presidents and statesmen until the time of 
Mr. Calhoun, with few, if any exceptions, it cannot now be 
justly regarded as a grievance. 3. It may be further answered 
to this complaint, that all difficulty on this score was avoided 
by the Missouri Compromise, and might be removed by a resto- 
ration of that agreement. It is at best a theoretical difficulty, 
as the South has neither freemen nor slaves to spare for the 
territories. Their slaves are too valuable where they are, to 



24 The State of the Country. [January 

send them into regions where their labour could be turned to 
little or no account. 

At other times, by equality of the states is meant an equal 
control in the administration of the government. In the past 
history of the country the South has been dominant. Although 
in a minority as to population, it has shaped the whole policy 
of the country. K compact minority in almost all governments 
holds the balance of power. The Germans, although not more 
than one-third of the people, secured the control of the state 
of Pennsylvania through a great part of its history. And so 
the South, by throwing her weight into one party or the other, 
has hitherto secured the ascendency. A protecting tariff, a 
national bank, internal improvements, were the policy of the 
country so long as the South was in their favour; when she 
turned against them they were abandoned. This state of things 
is passing away. By the inevitable progress of events, the 
sceptre is changing hands. The more rapid increase of the 
free states in number and in population, is more and more re- 
ducing the relative importance and power of the South. This 
result has been long foreseen. Southern statesmen have pre- 
dicted that the time must come when the South could no longer 
control the policy of the country. Not to command, however, 
is in their estimation to submit. Not to be masters, in the logic 
of the extremists, is to be slaves. And hence the frequent and 
fervid declamations addressed to the people, against the tyranny 
of the North, and the inevitable servitude of the South, should 
it remain in the Union. The thing complained of is not the 
irresponsible power of a majority. The founders of our govern- 
ment were fully convinced that no despotism could be more in- 
tolerable than a pure democracy, where the majority had unre- 
stricted power. Our national legislature is restricted within 
very narrow limits by the Constitution. It has not the political 
omnipotence of the Parliament of Great Britain, which can 
change the dynasty, abolish the peerage, or the church establish- 
ment, and model at pleasure the institutions of the country. 
Our Congress has no such power. Its authority is limited by 
a written Constitution. It is held in check by the distribution 
of power, and by the legislative authority being vested in two 
bouses — the one composed of the representatives of the states 



1861.] The State of the Country. 25 

•without regard to tlieir relative size or importance. In every 
way, therefore, that human Avisdom could devise, the minority 
is protected from the tyranny of the majority. Nor is the 
equality claimed by the disunionists, the equal rights of the 
states one with another; for this is now enjoyed and secured to 
the fullest extent. The thing claimed is this, viz. that the 
slave interest should have equal political control with all the 
other interests of the country combined. This is what is meant 
by equality. Less than this is declared to be inconsistent with 
their safety and honour. This is the idea which, by the teach- 
ing of Mr. Calhoun, has taken thorough possession of the minds 
of a certain class of Southern politicians. The correctness of 
this representation is proved beyond question, by the nature of 
the means proposed to correct the inequality complained of, or 
dreaded. These remedies are all directed to the natural, 
peaceful, and normal operation of the Constitution. They re- 
quire that the Constitution should be changed in order to secure 
the equality demanded. Thus it has been proposed that the 
number of slaveholding states shall always be equal to that of 
the free states ; that every new free state admitted into the Union 
should be counterbalanced by a new slave state. Thus the 
equality of the representatives of the slave interest in the Se- 
nate — which has controlling power in the government — with the 
representatives of the free states, would be preserved. Another 
proposal is, that there should be two Presidents — one chosen 
by the North, and the other by the South, and that their con- 
currence should be necessary to the validity of any Presiden- 
tial action. Still another proposition is, that the Constitution 
should be so altered as to make a majority of the whole of the 
slaveholding states, and a majority of the free states, necessary 
to the election of a President ; and further, that no law should 
take effect unless sanctioned by a majority of representatives 
from both sections of the country. These are so many devices 
to make one equal to three. They amount to an avowal on 
the part of their advocates, that slaveholders cannot live in any 
political community which they do not control. The proposi- 
tions above referred to all assume that the slave interest must 
be dominant; that nothing shall be done without its consent; 
no officer, whether civil or military, judicial or executive, shall 
VOL. xxxiir. — NO. I. 4 



26 Tlie State of the Country. [January 

be appointed; no law enacted, no measure adopted, without its 
approbation, and consequently for its benefit. This supposes 
that the interest of the slaveholders is antagonistic to all others, 
and is so important that it may rightfully be dominant, or at 
least co-ordinate and limiting. It assumes that three hundred 
and fifty thousand shall equal twenty millions. As this is a 
physical and moral impossibility under our present Constitu- 
tion, it is proposed to alter it, or failing that, to dissolve the 
Union. This is the light in which the claim to equality, as in- 
terpreted and urged by the disunionists, presents itself to the 
people of the North. It is an unrighteous and unreasonable 
demand. It is demanding far more than the Constitution, which 
•we have all sworn to support, ever contemplated. Equality of 
all classes in the eye of the law, equality of the states as to 
rights and privileges, equal protection, equal liberty, equal 
facilities of advancement, equal access to all places of honour 
and power — in short, constitutional equality in its fullest ex- 
tent, is what all are willing to concede. But that one particular 
interest, one special class of the community, should have equal 
weight and influence with all the others combined — that three 
hundred thousand should equal twenty millions — is, at least 
under our present Constitution, an impossibility. And if this 
is the ultimatum of the extreme South, disunion is inevitable. 
Our present system gives every security and advantage to the 
slaveholding class, which can be reasonably demanded. The 
Constitution permits the representation of slave property, while 
no other species of property is allowed a representation in the 
national legislature. Florida, with its forty-seven thousand of 
white inhabitants, and its twenty-three millions of property, 
has as much influence in the Senate of the United States, as 
New York, Avith its three millions of inhabitants, and one thou- 
sand millions of property. Is not this enough? There are 
only twenty-five thousand slaveholders in South Carolina, and 
yet the}^ have really as much control of the Government as the 
two million five bundled thousand people in Pennsylvania. Of 
the eighteen Presidential elections which have been held since 
the adoption of the Constitution, twelve resulted in the choice 
of slaveholders, and six in the choice of non-slaveholders. Of 
three hundred and seven pi-inci|)al appointments under the Con- 



1861.] The State of the Country. 27 

stitution, two hundred and four have been hekl by slavehohlers. 
Surely, the complaint of want of equality on the part of the 
slaveholders, is of all others the most unfounded. 

We have thus endeavoured calmly and fairly to estimate the 
grievances alleged by our Southern brethren. We have endea- 
voured to show that the people of the North are not responsible 
for the defamatory language of the abolitionists ; nor for any 
attempts to create dissatisfaction among the slaves. We have 
endeavoured to prove that the constitutional compact with 
regard to the restoration of fugitive slaves has not been violated; 
because the Federal Government, the only constitutional organ 
for the performance of that duty, has never refused or failed to 
perform it to the extent of its ability ; and because, even if any 
state attempted to nullify the fugitive slave law, the Constitu- 
tion provides redress, first in the judicial, and then in the mili- 
tary power of the government. And, finally, we endeavoured 
to show that the complaint of the want of equality has no 
rational foundation. 

It is however assumed that any state has the right to secede 
from the Union, whenever it sees fit. It matters not, therefore, 
whether these grievances are real or imaginary, if the cotton 
states believe that their interests will be promoted by secession, 
they have the right to secede. This is the ground taken by the 
leaders of the secession movement. They desire a dismember- 
ment of the Union ; they wish that the cotton states alone, or 
in connection with the other slaveholding states, should be con- 
stituted into an independent nation. Complaints of injustice 
or inequality, predictions of aggressions, are only the means 
employed to arouse the public mind, and to make the people 
willing to sever the tie which binds them to the other states. 
Is, then, secession one of the reserved rights of the states? 
Is any state at liberty to withdraw from the Union whenever 
she sees fit? The question does not concern the right of revo- 
lution. Revolution and secession are very different things. 
The one is the overthrow of a government, on the ground of the 
abuse of its powers, by those who are legally and de facto sub- 
ject to its authority. It is admitted to be illegal. It is an act 
of violence, as much as homicide, and is, like homicide, to be 
justified only by necessity. The other is claimed to be a peace- 



28 Tlie State of the Country. [January 

fill, orderly process, a mere dissolution of a partnership, which 
is binding only during the consent of parties. The leaders of 
the secession movement regard the Union as a mere partner- 
ship ; a treaty between sovereign states, which may be dissolved 
by any one of the parties, by giving due notice. That this is a 
false view of the case is evident : 

1. From the very idea of a nation. It is a body politic, 
independent of all others, and indissolubly one. That is, indis- 
soluble at the mere option of its constituent parts. As the 
Abbeville District cannot secede at pleasure from the state of 
South Carolina, so neither can South Carolina secede at plea- 
sure from the United States, provided the United States con- 
stitute a nation. That these states do constitute one nation, as 
distinguished from a number of nations, bound together by 
treaty, is proved from the fact that they in their collective 
capacity have all the attributes, and exercise all the preroga- 
tives of a nation. They have national unity. They have one 
name, one flag, one President, one legislature, one Supreme 
Court, one navy and army. The authority, legislative, judicial, 
and executive, of the general government, extends to every part 
of the land, and is everywhere, within its sphere, supreme. 
That the states are independent and sovereign, within constitu- 
tional limits, in the management of their internal affairs, is no 
more inconsistent with the unity of the nation, than the like 
independence of the municipal corporations in England is incon- 
sistent with the national unity of Great Britain. Our Consti- 
tution, says Mr. Madison, is neither a consolidated government 
nor a confederated government, but a mixture of both. "It 
Avas not formed," he continues, "by the government of the com- 
ponent states, as the Federal Government, for which it was 
substituted. Nor was it formed by a majority of the people of 
the United States as a single community, in the manner of a 
consolidated government. It was formed by the states; that 
is, by the people in ciicii of the states acting in their highest 
sovereign capacity, and formed consequently by the same 
authority which formed the state constitutions. Being thus 
derived from the .^ame source as the constitutions of the states, 
it has, within eacii state, the same authority as the constitution 
ot the state; and is as much a constitution, in the strict sense 



1861.] The State of the Country. 29 

of the term, within its prescribed sphere, as the constitutions 
of the states are within their respective spheres ; but with this 
essential and obvious difference, that being a compact among 
the states in their highest sovereign capacity, and constituting 
the people thereof one people for certain purposes, it cannot be 
altered or annulled at the will of the states individually, as the 
constitution of a state may be at its individual will." (Letter 
of Mr. Madison, quoted by Amos Kendall, Esq., in the Wash- 
ington Star.) The United States, therefore, under the Consti- 
tution, are one people; they are one nation, in virtue of a 
common Constitution within its sphere, in the face of all other 
nations, just as any state is one, in virtue of its constitution. 
But if a nation, there is no possibility of its dismemberment, 
except by rebellion or revolution, unless by common consent. 
The very idea of a nation is, that it is one, independent, organ- 
ized political community, whose separate parts are not severally 
independent of each other, but constitute an organic whole. 
The word right has both a legal and a moral sense. No con- 
stituent member of a nation can ever have the legal right to 
secede or rebel. It may have a moral right, in case of absolute 
necessity. But having no legal right, it exercises its moral 
right of rebellion, subject to the legal and moral right of the 
government against which it rebels, to resist or to concede, as 
it may see fit. 

2. A second argument against the right of secession is found 
in the very words and avowed design of the compact. The 
contracting parties stipulate that the Union shall be "per- 
petual." A perpetual lease is one that cannot be annulled at 
pleasure. A perpetual grant is one which cannot at will be 
recalled. A perpetual union is one Avhich cannot be dissolved 
except on the consent of all the parties to that union. Seces- 
sion is a breach of faith. It is morally a crime, as much as the 
secession of a regiment from the battle field would be. If the 
country were at war and one state should withdraw her contin- 
gent, on the ground that her officers were not put in supreme 
command, or that their rations were not to their taste, she 
would retire draggling her standard in the mire of ineffaceable 
disgrace. It seems almost too plain for argument, that if the 
several states, or the people thereof in their sovereign capacity, 



30 T}ie State of the Country. [January 

have pledged themselves to a perpetual union, and ratified their 
plighted faith bj an oath, no one state can secede without 
incurring the twofold criminality of breach of faith and viola- 
tion of an oath. 

3. A third argument against the right of secession is drawn 
from the historical fact, that the right was at first desired by 
some of the states and formally rejected. New York wished to 
adopt the Constitution on' condition that she might be permit- 
ted to withdraw should she see fit. Madison wrote to Hamilton 
that such a conditional ratification of the Constitution was worse 
than a rejection. New York, therefore, concluded to come in 
on the same terms with the other states, with the express under- 
standing that there was to be no secession. These facts have 
been recently presented in all the papers and need not be 
enlarged upon. It is plain, therefore, from the history of the 
adoption of the Constitution, that the right of secession was 
denied. It was on this understanding that South Carolina 
and all the other states entered the Union. For one or more 
of them noAv to withdraw, must therefore be either justifiable 
rebellion or a breach of faith. 

4. This may be said to be res adjudicata. All parties are 
committed against the doctrine of secession. When the New 
England states, under the pressure of the embargo laws and of 
the evils to them of the war of 1812, sent delegates to the 
Hartford Convention to consult about the means of redress, the 
measure was condemned with one voice by the dominant party 
as tending to secession. The liichnond Enquirer, then in the 
height of its influence, the recognized exponent of the princi- 
ples of the Jeffersonian party at the South, elaborately proved 
that no state or number of states had the right to separate from 
the Union unless by the consent of the other states. In 1814 
that journal held the following language: "No man, no asso- 
ciation of one state or set of states, has a right to withdraw 
from the Union of its own account. The same power which 
knit us together can unknit us. The same formality which 
formed the links of the Union is necessary to dissolve it. The 
majority of the states which formed the Union must consent to 
the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent 
has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union or distract 



1861.] The State of the Country. 31 

the efficiency of its constitutional law, is treason — treason to all 
intents and pwyoses." What was true then is true now. And 
treason by the law of God and man is one of the greatest of 

crimes. 

5. The manifold absurdities, abnormities, and evils which 
flow from the doctrine of secession, aflford a sufficient proof of 
its unsoundness. These have of late been abundantly presented 
in the public prints. The United States gave fifteen millions 
of dollars for Louisiana, for the express purpose of securing 
command of the Mississippi river. According to the doctrine 
of secession Louisiana may secede, and the whole advantage of 
the purchase be lost. Ten millions were paid for Texas, thou- 
sands of lives and millions of dollars were expended in the 
Mexican war for her security, and the acquisition of California. 
Five millions were paid for Florida, one hundred and twenty 
millions have been offered for Cuba. It is absurd to suppose 
that our government can be founded on the theory of secession, 
and yet the people be willing to spend such enormous sums for 
territory to which they would acquire no title. If the right exists, 
it belongs to all the states and at all times. The country may 
be engaged in a perilous war, and one-half the states may legally 
secede and leave the remainder to bear the consequences. Sup- 
pose Louisiana or Texas had seceded in the rear of our army 
during the Mexican war, and cut off our resources. Would that 
have been a legal procedure? Or if the whole people should 
join in making the Pacific railroad, may Missouri and California 
at its termini secede, and keep it all to themselves. Such are 
some of the consequences of this theory. It is refuted by the 
aj-gumentum ad ahsurdum. Secession, as Mr. Madison says, 
is revolution, and revolution is rebellion, and rebellion is at 
least illegal. Whether in any case morally right, depends on cir- 
cumstances. If not justified by intolerable oppression and in- 
justice, it is one of the greatest of crimes. That the Southern 
states are not oppressed, is plain from their own declaration. 
They boast of their prosperity and power. They claim to be the 
richest portion of the Union. They contrast their $200,000,000 
of exports with the $100,000,000 exported from the North. 
Georgia has doubled her taxable property in the last ten years. 
The same general prosperity prevails throughout the South. 



32 The State of the Country. [January 

Of oppression, therefore, there can be no pretence. As to 
injustice, the only things compLained of are the difficulty thrown 
in the way of the restoration of fugitive slaves, and the territo- 
rial question. These grounds of complaint have been con- 
sidered. The North has not broken faith with the South as to 
fugitive slaves. The Federal Government, which alone has the 
right to restore them, has never refused to do so. The diiB- 
culty is not in any breach of faith. It is in the nature of the 
service. Men at the North are willing to let the General Govern- 
ment do the work, but they do not choose to be made slave- 
catchers themselves. The present fugitive slave law could not 
be executed efficiently at the South, except by federal officers. 
We should like to see Senator Chesnut or the Hon, Mr. Rhett 
called to join in the pursuit of a fugitive slave. They would do 
what men here do. They would say, The work must be done, 
but let those whose business it is see to it. Neither oppression 
nor injustice can be pleaded in justification of disunion. Dis- 
union was determined upon for other reasons; these complaints 
are used to inflame the public mind. \Ye do not doubt that 
many excellent men, many sincere Christians at the South, 
have been brought to believe that secession is legally and 
morally right. But it is no new thing in the history of the 
world that great crimes have been thought right. There never 
was an auto dafe which was not sanctioned by the ministers of 
religion. The greatest crimes have been perpetrated by those 
who thought they were doing God service. The fact, therefore, 
that good men approve of secession, that they pray over dis- 
union, that they rise from their knees and resolve to commit 
the parricidal act, does not prove it to be right. It only 
proves how perverted the human mind may become under the 
influence of passion and the force of popular feeling. 

This is the light in which wo think this subject ought to be 
viewed. Is disunion morally right? Does it not involve a 
breach of faith, and a violation of the oaths by which that faith 
was confirmed? "We believe, under existing circumstances, that 
it does, and therefore it is as dreadful a blow to the church as 
it is to the state. If a crime at all, it is one the heinousness of 
which can only be imperfectly estimated from its probable effects; 
but these arc sad enough. It blots our name from among the 



1861.] The State of the Country. 33 

nations of the earth. The United States of North America 
will no longer exist. All the recollections which cluster around 
those words, all the bright hopes attached to them for the 
future, must be sunk for ever. The glorious flag which has so 
long floated in the advance of civilization and liberty, must be 
furled. We lose our position as one of the foremost nations of 
the earth — the nation of the future — the great Protestant 
power, to stand up for civil and religious freedom. All despots 
will rejoice, and all the friends of liberty mourn over our fall. 
"VVe write thus in the apprehension that the whole South should 
secede. If the movement were to be confined to South Caro- 
lina, it would be simply absurd. The attempt to make a nation 
of a state, with a white population less than half that of Phila- 
delphia, without anything to distinguish them for wealth, intelli- 
gence, moral power, or culture, from the other states of the 
Union, would be madness.* But the loss of a single plank may 

« In speaking thus, we are only repeating the sentiments of a leading Caro- 
linian. In 1851, the Hon. W. W. Boyce addressed the following protest against 
secession, to the people of South Carolina: " South Carolina cannot become a 
nation. God makes nations, not man. You cannot extemporize a nation out 
of South Carolina. It is simply impossible; we have not- the resources. We 
could exist by tolerance, and what that tolerance would be, when we consider 
the present hostile spirit of the age to the institution of slavery, of which we 
would be looked upon as the peculiar exponent, all may readily imagine. I 
trust we may never have to look upon the painful and humiliating spectacle. 

"From the weakness of our national government, a feeling of insecurity 
would arise, and capital would take the alarm and leave us. But it may be 
said. Let capital go. To this I reply that capital is the life-blood of a modern 
community, and in losing it, you lose the vitality of the state. 

" Secession, separate nationality, with all its burdens, is no remedy. It is 
no redress for the past ; it is no security for the future. It is only a magnifi- 
cent sacrifice of the present, without in any wise gaining in the future. We 
are told, however, that it is resistance, and we must not submit to the late 
action of Congress. Now, I would like to know which one of these measures we 
resist by secession. It is not the prohibition of slave marts in the District of 
Columbia. It is not the purchase of the Texas territory. It is certainly not 
the admission of California. Which aggression, then, do we resist by seces- 
sion? These are all the recent aggressions which we resist now by secession. 
Secession, gallant as may be the spirit which prompts it, is only a new form of 
submission. 

" For the various reasons I have stated, I object, in as strong terms as I 
can, to the secession of South Carolina. Such is the intensity of my convic- 
tion upon the subject, that, if secession should take place — of which I have no 

VOL. XXXIII. — NO. I. 5 



34 The State of the Country. [January 

cause the noblest ship to founder. The secession of South 
Carolina may draw after it that of Georgia and the other cotton 
states. This is possible; although how those states can con- 
template with complacency the position they must occupy in a 
confederacy by themselves, is more than we can tell. They 
can exist only by sufferance. Any great naval power, as France 
or England, could at any moment, by interrupting their com- 
merce, reduce them to the greatest distress. They would attract 
to themselves all the slaves of the country, and then how could 
they exist in the midst of an anti-slavery world ? It is only in 
the event of Virginia, with her venerable name, her political 
power, her commanding influence, joining in the secession, and 
drawing with her all the other slaveholding states, that the full 
measure of the evils of disunion would come upon us. Then, 
it is difficult to see how the irritation arising from conterminous 
independent states, the one slaveholding and the other free, 
should fail to produce collision, and collision lead to civil war 
and servile insurrection. It is the possibility, or probability, of 
such horrors following this secession movement, that makes us 
view the matter as so worthy of condemnation. As to the 
mere prosperity of the North, we see no reason why it may 
not do as well without political union with the South, as 
Canada does without a like union with the United States. The 
extent and resources of the country above Mason and Dixon's 
line, are far greater than those of almost any modern empire. 
The time may probably soon come Avhen Canada and the North- 
ern states would be peaceably united in one great confederacy, 
and the free portion of the country would have a career before 
it scarcely less glorious than ever. All this supposes disunion 
to be peaceable. As we fear this is impossible, Ave look upon 
disunion as only another name for destruction. A Southern 
paper says: "The first fugitive that escapes after dissolution, 
Avill be equivalent to a declaration of war." 

One of the most distinguished advocates of secession tells the 
people of South Carolina not to deceive themselves Avith the 
expectation that disunion does not mean Avar. It seems to be 

idea, for I cannot believe in the existence of such a stupendous madness — I 
shall consider the institution of slavery as doomed, and that the Great God in 
our blindness has made us the instrument of its destruction." 



1861.] The State of the Country. 35 

the general impression, North and South, that rushing a state 
out of the Union, without preliminary action on the part of the 
other states, the sudden and violent disruption of the ties which 
bind together the complicated system of our national and state 
governments, is hardly possible, especially in the present state 
of public feeling, without hostile collision. And the first con- 
flict will be like a spark in a magazine of powder. The respon- 
sibility, therefore, assumed by those who are urging on seces- 
sion, which all parties have united in denouncing as treason, is 
indeed fearful. No part of the Union is free from guilt in this 
matter. The North has its sins to answer for. But if the 
views presented in the foregoing pages are correct, the blood 
and misery which may attend the dissolution of the confederacy 
must lie mainly at the door of those who for selfish ends labour 
to effect it, who wish for disunion as a means of prosperity. 
What is to be the effect of this state of things on the church 
and the interests of religion? How are those churches to be 
held together, whose members are nearly equally divided 
between the North and South? The papers already announce 
the introduction of a resolution into the Synod of South Caro- 
lina, for the dissolution of its connection with the General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. If we are to be plunged 
into the horrors of civil war and servile insurrections, no tongue 
can tell how the cause of the Redeemer must suffer throughout 
our whole land. It seems impossible that Christian men can 
blind their eyes to these probable consequences of disunion. 
The eloquent appeal of Dr. Dabney, of Virginia, made through 
the columns of the Nortlt Carolina Presbyterian, to the Chris- 
tians of the South, can hardly fail to produce a salutary 
impression. And should the President, as is generally antici- 
pated, earnestly recommend in his message to Congress, a 
convention of the states, that disunion, if it must come, may at 
least be peaceably effected, the public sentiment of the country 
would demand that his counsels should be heeded. Under 
those circumstances, if Christians at the South do not protest 
against immediate action, we shall conclude that God has given 
us up. 

But is disunion inevitable? It is of course impossible by any 
concessions or compromise, to arrest the course of those who 



36 The State of the Country. [January 

desire disunion for its own sake ; who believe that the Southern 
states will be more secure and prosperous in an independent 
confederacy than under the present Constitution, no matter 
how faithfully it may be administered. But we believe that 
this class is very small. It consists of the Garrisonians of the 
North and the professed disunionists at the South. The for- 
mer desire the dissolution of the Union, because they are per- 
suaded, as are thousands, North and South, that such dissolu- 
tion would be the doom of slavery. The others desire it for 
their own ends. The mass of the people would gladly preserve 
the sacred edifice, cemented with the blood of our fathers, if we 
could only be reconciled and live together peaceably. The two 
great difficulties which stand in the way of this harmonious 
union, are the fugitive slave law, and the territories. As to the 
former, the constitutional claim of the South is undoubted, but 
the difficulties in the way of carrying into effect that provision 
of the Constitution are almost insuperable. These difficulties 
do not arise from state laws, or from the supineness of the 
General Government, but from the laws of human nature. The 
compromise Avhich has been proposed on this point is, that the 
North should pay the full value of every fugitive slave. This 
we are persuaded the North would gladly do. How it should 
be done, may be a question difficult to answer. The ends to be 
accomplished are that the payment should be prompt and with- 
out contention. Neither of these ends could be secured if the 
payment is to be sought from the separate states or counties. 
It must be made by the General Government, and may be 
reimbursed from that portion of the price of the public lands 
already deposited with the states; or, as the public lands are 
common property, their proceeds may be distributed among the 
states, and the amount necessary to pay for fugitive slaves 
deducted from the portion due to the North. Any objections 
to this scheme are trifling compared with the importance of the 
object to be attained. As to the territories, let the Missouri 
Compromise be restored, the abrogation of which is the imme- 
<liate source of all our present troubles. The adoption of these 
measures, both of which have been repeatedly proposed, wouhl 
meet the views, as we cannot but believe, of the great body of 
moderate and good men in every part of the country. 



. TRDQRY OF CONGRESS 

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